Push Notifications

A push notification is a short message that appears on a phone or a computer screen while the person is doing something else. They do not have to open your app or your website to see it. One line of text, sometimes a small picture, and a tap that opens the right page.

Only a business the person has agreed to hear from can send one. The phone or the browser asks with a small box, and the answer is a plain yes or no. If they say no, nothing you build can reach them. That box appears once, so the moment you ask matters more than the wording. Asking on the very first screen, before anyone knows what your app does, is how most refusals happen. Ask after the first booking and far more people say yes.

The messages worth sending are the useful ones. Your class starts in an hour. Your order left the warehouse. The dentist moved your Tuesday appointment to Wednesday. Nadiva sends salon and gym reminders exactly like these, and a chair that would have sat empty gets filled.

iPhones have one rule that surprises people. A website can only push to an iPhone if the customer adds it to the home screen first, and hardly anyone does. If your customers carry iPhones and the message has to arrive, you need an installed app from the App Store. Android phones and desktop browsers are easier. Even then nothing is certain, because a phone that is off, a quiet setting or a deleted app all swallow the message. Treat a push as a helpful nudge, never as proof that someone was told.

The fastest way to lose the permission is to send too much. People rarely complain. They switch you off, or they remove the app, and you never find out why. Two messages a week that a customer wants beat ten that annoy them. Linkysoft asks a client to list every message before we build the sending screen, and about half get cut in that meeting. Send during working hours in the customer's own time zone.

None of this is added at the end. When Linkysoft plans a mobile app project, the notification list is written before the first screen is drawn, because it decides what the system has to know about each customer.